Sunday, May 24, is the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year B, Cycle I). In the Archdioceses and Dioceses of Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington, this is Ascension Sunday.

Papal

On May 24, Pope Benedict XVI will celebrate the Ascension of the Lord at Monte Cassino, an hour south of Rome (pictured below).

It’s appropriate for Benedict to visit here: This is where St. Benedict, his namesake, revitalized monasticism. If you have a Benedict medal, look under the figure of the saint. It may read: “ex SM Casino MDCCCLXXX” (from holy Monte Cassino, 1880). This is the medal struck to commemorate the 1,400th anniversary of St. Benedict’s birth.

Monte Cassino (newly restored) is also an evocative spot to celebrate the Ascension; it’s high on a hill some 80 miles southeast of Rome.

Its vantage point, in fact, made it a World War II target of American bombers in 1944. They feared the Germans were using it as a lookout. The Pope’s visit comes on the anniversary of the bombardment.

Readings

Ascension of the Lord (Ascension Thursday or Ascension Sunday). Acts 1:1-11; Psalms 47:2-3, 6-9; Ephesians 1:17-23; Mark 16:15-20.

Our Take

The Ascension is a mysterious feast, and today’s Gospel is the most mysterious of all the Ascension Gospels.

It’s not altogether clear how literally we are to take the accounts of Jesus’ departure from earth. Did he rise up and up and up in the sky out of sight, up where clouds float high above the earth?

Or did he kind of dissipate like a Star Trek tractor beam, while mists swirled around him?

Here’s a way to think of it.

1. We believe in heaven, which isn’t so much “up above the clouds” as it is in another dimension outside of time and space.

2. We believe Christ is God, who, famously, is “in heaven.”

3. We believe that Christ became man — entered our dimension of time and space — then returned.

To ask “What does it look like when someone leaves our familiar dimensions for another place?” is to ask something that’s beyond our imagination. They say if a two-dimensional creature were to see a sphere, it wouldn’t make sense, either.

What we do know is that when an earth-bound creature sees a heaven-sent creature return it looks, apparently, like the Ascension.

The second mystery here is the signs.

“These signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17).

Here are two helpful ways to think of this mystery.

First imagine Jesus had listed these “signs that will accompany Americans”: “They will walk on the moon; they will solve the Rubik’s Cube puzzle, and they will speak on devices with signals that travel through space.” We wouldn’t puzzle over it. These things have all happened. No, every American hasn’t done each of those things, but some have, so the signs are fulfilled.

In the same way, many of his followers have driven out demons (at every baptism, for example); a few of his believers have spoken new languages and healed sick people; St. Paul was unharmed by a serpent, and several believers have drunk poison and been safe.

2. But for most Christians, from the earliest days, these signs have had not a literal but a spiritual meaning. Take St. Benedict: His medal includes an image of a broken cup. It broke miraculously and prevented him from drinking poison. Even St. Benedict didn’t treat Christ’s words literally.

St. Gregory the Great in 540 put it this way: “Holy Church does every day in spirit what then the apostles did in body; for when her priests by the grace of exorcism lay their hands on believers and forbid the evil spirits to dwell in their minds, what do they do, but cast out devils?

“And the faithful ... whose tongues sound forth the holy mysteries speak a new language; they who by their good warnings take away evil from the hearts of others take up serpents; and when they are hearing words of pestilent persuasion, without being at all drawn aside to evil doing, they drink a deadly thing, but it will never hurt them; whenever they see their neighbors growing weak in good works, and by their good example strengthen their life, they lay their hands on the sick, that they may recover. And all these miracles are greater in proportion, as they are spiritual, and by them souls and not bodies are raised.”

So in both senses — the literal and the spiritual — this Gospel has been fulfilled as Christ said.